Bear Jam

If you come around a bend and find a line of cars stopped dead, brake lights on, folks half-hanging out their windows with their phones up — congratulations. You've hit a bear jam. It's a Cades Cove tradition older than any of us.

There are somewhere around nineteen hundred to two thousand black bears in this park — roughly two bears for every square mile, one of the densest populations anywhere in the East — and this cove, with its berries and its acorns and its open fields, is about the best bear-watching in the whole Smokies. Black bears, mind you, not grizzlies; we've got no grizzlies here. A big male might go three hundred pounds, though most are smaller, and this time of year they are eating more or less around the clock, packing on fat.

So let's do this right, because how you act matters. Stay in your car if the bear's near the road — your car is a blind, and it keeps the bear wild. If you're out walking and you see one, keep your distance, a good hundred yards or more, and never, ever get between a mother and her cubs. And here's the one that could get somebody killed or get a bear killed: do not feed them. Not a chip, not a crumb, not a 'just this once.' There's an old saying in these parks — a fed bear is a dead bear — because once a bear learns to see people as a lunch counter, it gets bold, and a bold bear eventually has to be put down. Your restraint is literally keeping that animal alive.

So enjoy the bear jam. Take the picture. Just take it from behind glass, and leave the cove wild enough that the next carload gets to hit a bear jam too.